The Press: The 59th Mission

Before the war, when Ben Kuroki helped his father raise sugar beets and
seed potatoes on a farm in Hershey, Neb. (pop. 487), nobody paid much
attention to the color of Ben's skin. The day after Pearl Harbor,
Kuroki enlisted. On the train to camp, he heard for the first time what
became an agonizingly familiar question: "What's that Jap doing in the
Army?" To answer it, Japanese-American Ben Kuroki volunteered as
an Air Force gunner.

After flying 30 missions in a B-24 over Europe and Africa and winning a
pair of D.F.C.s, Sergeant Kuroki came homewhere he...